Anathema
by Llamasandtea
Summary: Sam and Dean Winchester get on a hunt that's predictably sure to be the usual deal: a ghost or three, old creepy rural townsfolk, and lots and lots of digging. And then they encounter something that they haven't seen before - why does it feel like they're severely unqualified for this job?
1. One

**A/N: This is a work in progress. I don't update often. You have been warned. I have stopped watching Supernatural around the middle of season 12, so there will probably be no spoilers from the newest seasons.**

 **DISCLAIMER: No copyright infringement intended - all characters and concepts recognizable from intellectual work (mainly "Supernatural") belong to their owners. No profit is made from this.**

* * *

The newspapers often printed a shit ton of... well, shit. It wasn't really their fault, Dean supposed. They simply didn't know any better. Sometimes, though, it really got on his nerves. Where those people _seriously_ stupid enough to confuse a puma bite with a — seemingly — human one?!

This time, though, the article didn't discuss some animal's strange behaviour — "Yeah, right, I'll believe that pumas can climb to the fifth floor of a building in the middle of _downtown_ and abduct little boys in their sleep when I see it with my own eyes" — nor announced the rise of unexplained deaths in the neighbourhood in the last year — "Dude, I'm telling you, I've never seen anything as crazy as that thing. That woman was _clearly_ not human anymore!" The article Dean unfortunately found shoved under the toilet door of yet another motel room while he was trying to stop barfing into the toilet announced for the whole world to see:

WOMAN HOSPITALIZED AFTER ENCOUNTER WITH HAUNTED HOUSE :  
4th case in 3 months

The title, written in bolded black letters, took up most of the space of the newspaper's cover.  
If that was Sam's way of suggesting something, Dean did not get it.

He found him leaning on the doorframe of the toilet, arms crossed, when he opened the door - having lost half of his guts, or what felt like it, down the drain. Sam's face was contorted into his trademark bitchface. It was too early to be thinking about some possible case that'd fit their job description or about Sam's bad mood. It was too early to be thinking at all, dammnit!

"Sam, it's way too early to be in my face. Go chew on some books like the good boy that you are." His voice was rougher than usual, and he felt like someone had spent their night shoving glass down his throat. On second thought, that might be exactly what'd happened to him: the last thing he remembered was taking that seventh — or was it the eight? — tequila shot at the bar.

"Dean, it's 2 pm!" Sam yelled unnecessarily loudly, un-crossing his arms and waving them around, as if to imitate an octopus. That thought made him want to giggle like a schoolgirl, which he of course didn't do. Some things can be excused only while you're out of your mind from boose. "Where have you been all night?!"

Dean shoved his way past his brother, intending to find a beer in the mini-frigde across the room: that'd calm the pounding in his head. It might be well after breakfast, and lunch too, but it was still early enough for him to be unable to take Sam's incessant worrying and bitching. His dear brother, of course, didn't get the message and blocked his way.

"Dean, I am serious."

Dean had to fight another giggle. Sam had just called himself Sirius.

Perhaps his sleep hadn't cured him from the drunk state he'd got himself into last night, because for some reason the hilarious irritated him and the irritating made him want to laugh hard enough that he'd loose his pants.

"Sammy, just leave me alone. Lemme wake up and then shove whatever shit you want in front of my face. Deal?"

-:-:-:-:-:-

After much huffing and many judgemental stares on Sam's part, they finally looked more into the story behind the newspaper article his brother had shoved into his face. As its title suggested, the haunting, or whatever it was, was the fourth that'd happened in three months. It could be their kind of case, could not, but they still decided to drive all the way to that little town on the edge of Chicago — "Might as well see what kind of pies they sell there, eh Sammy?"

It took them several hours, but they did at last reach the town. It was a calm little place, a bit too calm for Dean's liking. Probably had only one bar, and the only worthy pies would be those made by these people's grandmothers.

In towns this small, everyone knew everybody, and that made things more difficult and much easier at the same time. Everyone had the dirt on everyone, but that meant that real observations were drowned out by petty jealousies and personal vendettas. Dean often had to maneuver around irrelevant subjects without being too offensive, sometimes even flirting with creepy old grandmas, to find out what exactly people knew that could be relevant to the case they were working on.

That evening, Sam and he met up in the room they took at "Granny Paula's Comfy Bed" and compared info. The women — all four of them — that had apparently come into contact with the now infamous haunted house were hysterical and Sam hadn't been able to get anything from them that wasn't a scream. From the hospital staff and the neighbours, both had gathered that the haunted house was in fact a residence for women going through a bit of trouble and that, including the four Sam had met, there were twenty-three of them, plus the staff. No one reported there ever being anything strange about the residence, and none of the old townsfolk reported ever hearing of a murder involving it.

The brothers called it a day and decided to try and dig up more information about the residence tomorrow.

-:-:-:-:-:-

The next morning, Sam and Dean woke up to a pouring rain. Nothing was worth going outside, so they spent the whole day cooped up inside the room they'd rented. After a good six hours of digging around the town's history, criminal and death records, and old scanned newspapers that could be found online, Dean had had enough. The room felt stuffy and he couldn't stand Sam's glances anymore. It was barely seven when he gave up, grabbed a beer, and watched TV for a few minutes, searching for some kind of distraction from the annoyingly loud rain and the pointless research.

He went to sleep much earlier than he was used to, still exhausted from his escapade a night ago. He could feel Sam's stare in his sleep.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Two days after their arrival into town, Dean found himself parking in front of an old building that looked more like an old-school University than a house for women to get back on their feet. It took him a few minutes and several tries to find a spot, as the church next door was overflowing with people coming for the sermon, and the parking spots were very limited. He stayed sitting for a few seconds, looking over at Sam who was sitting in the same tense silence he'd more or less adhered to in the past few days. Dean could just see that there was something eating at him, but that he wouldn't say anything until he couldn't keep it in anymore.

In that aspect, Dean thought, his little brother was just like him.

"Let's go."

In that same penetrating silence, they got out of the car and went up the steps to the antique residence. They had to wait for about a minute before a woman in her sixties came up to open the door. She looked at them as if to say: "Don't bother me, go away."

"Hello madam, I'm Dr. Grey, this is my colleague Dr. Darneck. We're psychiatrists from Chicago and -" Dean managed to say before the woman rudely interrupted him.

"If you're here to call my girls crazies, I strongly advise you boys to get the hell away from here or you'll learn what I'm capable of!"

Sam, ever the diplomat, quickly intervened before the woman started to scream. She'd probably try to get into a physical fight with them, too.

"Ma'am, we are here to provide support to the rest of the women here. We heard of the incidents and decided to come and make sure that it doesn't happen again."

That seemed to calm her a bit, and she let them in.

The building's insides looked just as decrepit as its outsides did. The cracked walls were lined with posters sprouting positive nonsense. The woman led them to an outdated parlor room with faded couches.

"What can I help you with, gentlemen?" the woman asked very pleasantly as they sat.

Dean figured she could go back to her role of nice old lady now that she didn't feel threatened by strangers. He guessed it was Sam's fault. No one had the right to be so tall.

Dean was quite distracted, and anyway Sam had always been the word-savvy one, so the youngest brother spoke first: "As I said, ma'am, we are here to make sure that everyone else here is okay. We are certified psychologists and are ready to provide help and support if needed."

As if on cue, the old woman burst into tears. Dean, who had been looking around the room, searching for anything weird, did a double take. The lady was laying it on a bit _too_ thick.  
Dean nearly gagged when there was suddenly a handkerchief in Sam's hand. It was promptly relocated to the woman's face, where she proceeded to make a show of her sorrow for a good five minutes. Dean was ready to stand up and start exploring the building by himself when she finally stopped.

"Oh, it was dreadful. Dreadful, I'm telling you! We are all so scared... And of course the poor girls..."

Dean had lost his patience. "Ma'am, do you remember anything odd happening before the... incidents? Or during them?"

"Odd? What kind of odd, young gentlemen?"

Sam's stare once again burned into the side of Dean's face, who really didn't care about his brother's care for tact and being gentle. The woman was obviously faking her shock. If Sam was too nearsighted to see that, Dean wasn't in the mood to take that bullshit from him.  
Sam carried on with the usual tripe through clenched teeth that was easy to spot for someone who knew his brother as well as Dean did. "Cold spots, strange sounds or smells, odd things like that."

The lady (she could become an actress, honestly, Dean thought) seemed to think really, really hard for a few seconds before breaking into a sad face (something he liked to call Regretful #3).

"Sorry to disappoint, but no. Nothing comes to mind."

"Then perhaps you could tell us more about what has been happening. Only someone as close to the situation as you could know about the intricacies of everything that you went through."

Did Sam really have to use such complicated words? Not that Dean didn't know what they meant, he wasn't illiterate, _thankyouverymuch_ , but he didn't use words such as "intricacies" and went by just fine. Show off.

"Well, you see, it all started with the nightmares. Of course, no one believed poor Cassandra. She was so convinced, you know? That they were real, and the other girls had to calm her down every morning. It was dreadful. We were all worried about her, the poor dear. No one could do anything - she started shrieking day and night for no reason at all! She wouldn't sleep, wouldn't eat. We _had_ to send her to that horrible hospital you know? My poor Fergus died there in 97', you know?

"And then Rebecka, oh, poor Rebecka. We simply thought she was getting too worried about Cassandra. She had nightmares too, but we all had them, so when Margaret found her with scratches all over, we thought she had been doing them to herself in her sleep. And then she took that fork and... Oh, it was horrible, I still have nightmares about all that blood!

"Lucy had always been quiet, you know. Nobody knew her much, and she had been with us for a few weeks only. She scared us all to death - we had to wrestle the knife from her hand! I called the police immediately while the girls restrained her.

"At first, I thought maybe they were catching it from each other, you know. They all slept in the same room, so maybe it was the feel of the place. But when everyone was moved from the room, it still went on!

"Pola caught that too! She was so twitchy all the time, and she has been like that for all the time she has spent with us here, but it started to become worse a few days before she..."  
From her gossip face #7 (appropriate for situations such as the mysterious but very interesting death or accident of the neighbor) the woman suddenly put back on her sad face and exploded into tears.

"Pola f-fell down the s-stairs! T-they told u-us she lo-lost her v-voice bec-cause she was s-s-screaming so much on the way t-to th-the hospital!"

Dean had had enough of that show. He quietly excused himself, mentioned he'd find the toilet himself, and left Sam to deal with the wails of the old lady. The glare directed at his back didn't melt him on his way out of the parlor.

It took him a few minutes to explore the whole building. His EMF started screaming as soon as he turned it on, and stayed off charts the whole time. Whatever had been giving the women nightmares in the building was either very strong or very present.

When he went back to the parlor, Sam was resuming his calming speech in fluent psycho-shit.  
"Thank you for sharing this with me, Mrs Whilthshire. I believe that expressing your emotions can be very beneficial," Sam shot a pointed glare Dean's way, "and will help you and everyone else who lives here. If you would agree, we would like to revisit you, perhaps tomorrow, and maybe discuss what I told you with the other residents."

"Ah, yes of course, Dr Darneck. Please do come tomorrow," the woman sniffed as she saw Dean had come back. "The girls will be delighted to have someone to talk to in these difficult times."

-:-:-:-:-:-

The ride back to the hotel room was tense. Sam was still fuming about whatever he was fuming about, and Dean kept the silence lasting as long as it could. He knew Sam would explode as soon as they weren't in a small space with transparent surfaces.

The explosion came as soon as they closed the door of their rented room behind them. Dean had barely made two steps inside when Sam started yelling at his back:  
"Dean, what's your problem?!"

He didn't say anything in answer. His path to his assigned bed was suddenly cut off by a gigantic irate moose of a man (sometimes Dean was still surprised at the sight of his little brother, who wasn't 'little' in any sense of the term and looked nothing like the cute little boy he had always bitched about having to babysit).

"Dean, I'm talking to you. Don't ignore me. Just... don't. We need to talk."

Dean sidestepped him:  
"We have nothing to talk about, Sammy. Go to sleep."

That evening, they both fell asleep to a silence even more tense than the ones before it.


	2. Two

**A/N: The rating is at "T" right now, and I'll try to keep it that way for the whole story. We'll see how it goes. Thank you to the people who read the first chapter, those who subscribed, and to the single reviewer. Hope you enjoy this second chapter!**

 **DISCLAIMER: No copyright infringement intended - all characters and concepts recognizable from intellectual work (mainly "Supernatural") belong to their owners. No profit is made from this.**

* * *

The next morning, they discussed their findings and theories about the case. It was definitely something, because there where all kinds of weird vibes in that house.

("They could all just be going crazy, you know. I'd go crazy, too, if I had to spend all of my time in the same house as that crazy old lady," Dean pointed out. "Dean, you and I both realize that what's been happening is a bit more extreme than getting annoyed to death by the caretaker.")

And so they researched, and went through their father's journal, and even called Bobby a few times.

And found nothing. There was clearly something unnatural going on in that residence, but what caused that escaped them. They evoked so many possibilities, the one Dean liked the best being a trickster gone dark, but none of them seemed to stick. A demon or a ghost were viable options, but they couldn't be certain until they confronted it.

That's how they found themselves on the doorstep of the place at three in the afternoon with any weapon they could imagine themselves needing concealed on them and in the trunk of the car.

Mrs Whilthshire opened the door, immediately smiling widely in Sam's direction.

"Hello, Mrs Whilthshire. Are you and the ladies ready to talk about your feelings?" Sam asked the old crone pleasantly.

"Oh, Dr Darneck, of course, of course," the woman replied. "Come in," she beckoned. "I think there is the most space in the dining room."

-:-:-:-:-:-

Dean hated this. There was a bunch of women staring expectantly at him. Usually, that would have made him happy. This time, they were staring at him for a reason he hated.

"I hate this," he whispered to Sam, turning his back on the twenty-three pairs of eyes.

"Shut up," Sam whispered back, turning around too. "We're here now, and you'll blow our cover if you don't talk to at least some of them."

"But I'm not fluent in psycho-shit like you are," Dean muttered, becoming more and more desperate every second. "Why don't you do it on your own, and I'll stand back and watch them for anything unusual, huh?"

"Dean," Sam sighed. "It's too late now. Come on.

"Very well. Now, I think we can start," Sam said, turning back towards the group of women. "We'll start with short introductions, and then we can start a group discussion. After that, we can hold private sessions with anyone who'd like to talk more privately."

Dean sighed and got ready for all hell to break lose.

-:-:-:-:-:-

"That wasn't all that bad, now was it, Dean?" Sam teased.

"Shut up," Dean muttered back. "That was not fun." He'd hated the afternoon. It had been worse than he'd thought. Women were only fun when they weren't crying all over him.

"It wasn't supposed to be, Dean" Sam answered reproachfully. "Maybe we even helped some of them."

"Don't care," he mumbled. "We didn't even get a chance to look around the building in more detail. What was the point of all that crying?"

"Dean," his brother sighed, but let go of the matter. "All right, let's go back to the hotel," he said, ignoring Dean's muttered "it's not even a proper hotel," "we'll figure something out in the morning."

-:-:-:-:-:-

The next morning saw them going to the dinner adjacent to the hotel for their breakfast. They'd already tried the food from there, but they'd never taken the time to properly sit in the tables in front of the building for a morning meal. The place was certainly a cozy one: Sam was having trouble getting his long legs tucked under the table they sat at.

As soon as the waitress-slash-cashier got their order, an old man sitting behind them, closer to the entrance of the dinner, moved his chair towards them.

"You're the shrinks that've been going to the haunted house, aren't ya?" he asked in a gravelly voice.

"We are," Sam replied, shooting a glance at Dean.

"Well then, boys," the man replied, "I've things to tell you!"

-:-:-:-:-:-

"So, what do you think about that guy?" he asked Sam after they'd left the dinner and started on their way up to their room.

"I don't know, Dean," his brother replied. "What he said could've been true, but without any proof..."

"Yeah, seems unlikely to me too," Dean said, looking in his pocket for the keys. "After all, how often do murders not get discovered? It's a small town, I'm pretty sure people would've noticed if someone went missing."

"They might not have," Sam said. "Remember, it's a place women go to when they have nowhere else to go. I don't think all twenty three of the current ones are from here."

"So, what," Dean said as they entered their room, "some woman got killed a few years back and she's haunting the place, scaring those that are there?"

"I don't know, I'm just as unsure as you are," Sam sighed. "I guess we'll find out."

And that was that.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Their plan was simple: get in during a time when there were the least people possible. With a house this big and so many occupants, that was a tough thing to ask for. The two brothers figured, however, that they could sneak in and do some reconnaissance on the coming Sunday, when most of the women, including that insufferable bad actress of a caretaker, - "I don't get how you could sweet-talk _her_ and not pick up chicks much better-looking than her, Sammy" - would be away.

In the meantime, they called Bobby a few more times and tried to run different scenarios by him. They were still unsure whether it was a ghost haunting the place. Dean hadn't ever heard of a ghost being able to torture people in their sleep before.

Sam was becoming more and more insufferable with every hour that passed. He mostly kept his thoughts to himself, but Dean could feel his brother's gaze boring into the side of his head from the opposite side of the hotel room when they stayed there, researching, or sitting across from each other in that stupid dinner. At least he didn't say anything. Dean didn't want to talk about it. He'd done the right thing, the only thing he could, everything else be damned.

Finally, Sunday came around, and it was time to put their (nonexistent) plan into motion.

If he was being honest with himself, - _for once_ , a voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Sam said - getting in unnoticed and finding the source of the problem was easier than Dean had thought it would be. As soon as they broke in, they heard screams and cries coming from one of the rooms on the second floor. They lost no time and rushed to the source of the disturbance. They found what felt like the whole house packed in one of the rooms. They literally had to push some of the women out to be able to squeeze themselves in.

Thought the room felt full, everyone was keeping as close to the walls as possible, avoiding the center of the room. There was one of the women; on the ground and contorted into an almost humanly-impossible shape by something invisible. Dean and Sam sent each other a knowing look before yelling at everyone to get out of the room.

"C'mon, get out, we're shrinks, we'll deal with it!" Dean had to repeat a few times. Many of the women resisted, either yelling about the police or an exorcist or throwing themselves at "Dr. Darneck and Dr. Grey" in hysterical tears, but the two brothers finally managed to push them all out. Sam closed the door behind them and they were at last alone with the vaguely familiar young woman contorted on the floor and whatever was making her do it.

"Okay," said Dean after shooting a resolute glance to Sammy. "We know you're here, we know what you are, and we know how to stop you, forcefully if we have to. So don't make it harder on yourself, will ya'?" After a few seconds fo silence, the woman on the floor started laughing, still upside down and with her head between her thighs. Her eyes, trained on the two brothers, were demented.

"Don't lie to me, hunters. You know nothing!" The voice coming out of the woman's mouth was indubitably hers, just stretched and distorted, as if she was in immense pain. "I've seen you come and go, you are just as clueless as everyone in this damn place!"

"Okay, fine," said Sam. "But leave her body, leave this place, and we won't have to hurt you."

"Leave this place?" asked the creature through the woman's mouth. "Oh, oh no. If I could I would, but I can't, so I sssshan't!" Another laugh was heard. The woman shifted slightly, trembling. Her head was now lying sideways on the floor and turned towards Sam.

They decided to shift tactics: "Okay, okay. Tell me, why are you possessing her? What has she done to you?" Sam asked. "Why are you torturing her?"

"B-because I-I... want t-to!"

Sam shot Dean a worried glance. Whatever was happening was getting worse. They had to do something and it was obviously Dean's job: the creature, watching them through the woman's eyes, could not see Dean right now. He had to act, and act fast.

He moved, inch by inch, around the woman, drawing a protective circle around her body and drawing the appropriate symbols in one go. Whatever was possessing her had to be expelled out of her before it made her break something. Once again, Dean wondered whether it was a demon or a ghost. It had been terrorizing the residents of the house for the past three months and wasn't limited to a particular room nor to a particular person. Was it powerful or simply unlimited in its range in the building?

He was almost done when the woman suddenly turned her head in Dean's direction. The position was even more dire for her prolonged health: she was slowly turning red.

"Wha-at do y-ou t-think you're d-doing?" the creature asked.

While her attention was elsewhere, Sam promptly took over the drawing of the circle. He tried to keep the interest of the thing on him while Sam worked.

"I'm making sure you stop what you're doing. You have no right to this woman. Leave her alone," he said.

"Yo-u're ri-ght," the creature simply said. Her gaze bore unwaveringly into Dean's, who was having trouble looking away. It was good, he told himself, as long as it looks at me, it doesn't notice Sam. _Isn't any less creepy, though_ , he thought.

The staring contest lasted for a good minute. Dean felt hypnotized by the stare of those eyes. The woman's eyes were of an uninteresting black, but the presence of the creature in her body seemed to add a certain depth to that gaze. Dean felt as if he could see the creature's soul and that it could see his.

"Done!" suddenly yelled Sam, and Dean snapped out of his trance. When he looked back to Sam, his brother was sending him a concerned glance. A look back at the woman revealed that she was no longer contorted and was laying in a pile on the floor.

Dean felt dazed and confused. Was it really that simple? They'd just had to draw a few symbols on the floor and the creature would leave? He stumbled.

"Dean, are you okay?" he heard as if through a wall.

He fainted.

-:-:-:-:-:-

He must've been out only for a few seconds, because when he came to, the first thing he saw was a dark figure standing in the corner of the room and Sam's concerned face above him. He focused on him for a few seconds and when he looked back at the corner, there was nothing there.

"Dean, are you okay?" Sam said again.

"Yeah, Sammy, m'good. Gerroff!" he slurred. He was still dizzy and light headed and he'd probably banged his elbow against the floor when he fell, but otherwise he felt fine.

"Dean, what happened?" Sam asked, concern evident in his voice. Dean brushed him off and stood up shakily.

"I'm... not sure," he replied, still watching that corner. Had he seen the entity that had been possessing the woman in the middle of the room? Talking about that...

"Sam, is she-" he started saying before he was cut off.

"She's fine, Dean," Sam said. "Nothing seems broken and she's breathing, so she should be fine. We'll have to tell Mrs. Whilthshire to call the ambulance, just in case."

"You think it was that easy?"he asked Sam. "We don't even known what it was!"

"I know," said Sam with a pinched look. "That'll have to do for now. I can hear the police and ambulances coming."

When he concentrated, Dean could hear them too, coming closer. They had to get out of here, fast, or be ready to provide ID.

"C'mon," said Dean, and they started to erase the circle on the floor.

-:-:-:-:-:-

It didn't take them long to erase the evidence of their improvised exorcism, but it took hours before the police, which they hadn't been able to circumvent, let them go. They finally got back to their hotel room at around eight pm.

Dean felt exhausted, and Sam wasn't laying off his back with his concerned looks and speeches about the dangers of an undiagnosed concussion. Dean was fine. He wouldn't have to bother with the consequences of a possible concussion for long, anyways. They got to sleep without talking, though Sam kept sending him a concerned looks. They were different from the ones of the last few days. This time, Sam was more concerned than angry.

Dean wasn't sure he liked the change.


	3. Three

**A/N: I apparently forgot to mention that this is set at the beginning of s3 (thank my friend T for reminding me). This chapter draws heavily on the first few episode of the season, which is why you'll notice a lot of canon stuff. Also thank T for promising to kick my ass if I don't update regularly. As I am not very obsessed with staying close to the original material, you might find some deviation from canon and quite a bit of OC-ness more and more as the story progresses. I guess that's why it's a fanfic and not the original thing. Enjoy and review so that I know just how much my writing sucks.**

 **DISCLAIMER: No copyright infringement intended - all characters and concepts recognizable from intellectual work (mainly "Supernatural") belong to their owners. No profit is being made from this.**

* * *

That night, Dean's dreams were fragmented and disorganized. He dreamt about his mom and his father, about little Sammy and their hunts. He slept fitfully, turning often and waking up for a few seconds several times during the night.

He knew Sam could tell he had a rough night by the bags under his eyes. Dean didn't speak of it and made as if he didn't notice his brother's inquisitive and highly concerned gaze, and eventually Sam subsided.

They stuck around for a few days more, just to make sure that the incident with the possession didn't repeat itself. When the caretaker told them, overjoyed, that none of the women in the house were having any more nightmares during their next visit, they shrugged and left Bobby's number behind. Dean figured it'd be better for Bobby to get late night calls from that... lady than it would be for him or his brother. Though, if the way he handled the woman was any indication, Sam might be better at this sort of thing than Dean had given him credit for. Maybe he really would be okay, on his own.

They left the boring little town behind them and drove to their next hunt, the incident all but forgotten.

-:-:-:-:-:-

In the next two weeks, they went from hunt to hunt in their usual way. Saving people, killing things. Dean evaded Sam's every attempt at talking about the deal he'd made. There was nothing for him to say. It didn't stop his brother from trying, though, and avoiding him became more and more difficult as time went by. Dean had more and more trouble escaping the sad, angry, and desperate look in Sam's eyes.

Seeing Lisa again, so many years after their last encounter, was a mixed package. On one hand, he remembered the fun they'd had together. On the other, he was now deathly afraid - _ha_ \- that Ben was his. And damn it all to Hell, he was in no position to be a father. He just had to trust that Lisa had not lied to him. It was easier to just let go.

Dean had been determined to live day-by-day, uncaring for the past and the pain it held. Nobody's said that was going to be easier, dammit. He had less than a year to live. Sam's worried looks reminded him of that often enough. His little brother thought him insensitive, uncaring about his approaching end, taken in by Dean's forced upbeat-ness. Ironically, that was all Dean could think of, laying on uncomfortable motel beds at night, listening to Sam's steady breaths. Yet, he was still fighting to move on, to forget. _Don't dwell_ became a recurring thought. _Pretend, forget._

The past didn't let itself be forgotten for long, though. Soon enough, it came knocking back. Dad and his secrets, indeed. Who'd have thought the man would've kept something permanent? The stuff inside the storage container was like a punch to the gut. Full of happy memories - he hadn't seen his first sawed-off shotgun in such a long time! - but also full of the secrets and the silences between their deceased father and them.

And he couldn't seem to stop dreaming! Every night, he would go to sleep in the motel room, and every night he would dream. Usually about Hell, and how he imagined it would be like. Sometimes, the dreams would turn slightly more pleasant, with the mother he barely remembered cast in the leading role. Dean was never sure whether the dreams were half-forgotten memories of better days or simply his mind's wishful conjurations.

He hated them.

With his life fading fast before his eyes, Dean was finding himself more emotional than he'd ever been, except perhaps as a little kid who didn't know any better. He'd thought John had beaten it out of him by the time he got to his teens. Apparently, the idea of dying sooner than expected - than hoped for - was enough to make him all emotional. Sam could easily see the desperation in his eyes, Dean was sure of it. He thought he was better at hiding his own emotions, godammit.

The thoughts kept repeating themselves over and over and over in his head until he couldn't take it anymore and he got up, got dressed once again, and left the room and Sam's entirely too silent presence for the distraction a local 24-hour bar could give him. _Wash, rinse, repeat_.

-:-:-:-:-:-

He was sitting in a hotel room, watching some late-night cartoon on the TV with Sammy sitting next to him on the other bed. The quiet in the room was interrupted regularly by the sounds of the cartoon and the cars periodically driving past the hotel they were in.

Dean was sure he had been thinking of something just then, but he'd lost his train of thought and couldn't pick it back up again. He knew he was supposed to feel safe, that this was the quietest it's been for the Winchester family in several weeks, but a sudden sense of urgency was quickly filling his mind. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. Where was John?

"Sammy?" Dean asked - and started. His voice sounded wrong. That wasn't the voice he was accustomed to, though of course it was his. Why was he surprised? "Sam?" he repeated when his little brother didn't respond.

Sam kept on watching the cartoon, laughing quietly at the funny parts, not looking at Dean. Now, he was really starting to panic. What was wrong with his brother? Wasn't John supposed to be there with them? He started again. Why was he calling their Dad by his name? That was weird. He never did that.

Dean tried to get up and go to Sammy, to check the salt lining the windowsills, check the lock on the hotel room door, but he couldn't move. He couldn't even lift a finger. His head was oriented towards Sammy. He couldn't move to cry out or do anything else than watch his brother watch the cartoons with a calm Dean could only envy.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Dean could see a dark figure, standing in the left side of the room. There was _something_ there in the room with them, and Dean couldn't move. It was watching them, _watching Sammy_ , he suddenly realized with a start, and he couldn't do anything to fight it or warn his bother of the impending danger.

The figure started to move towards Sammy and Dean fought with all of his might to move and take the gun on the bed next to him and move and _Sammy_ -

Dean woke up with a loud inhalation and a scream that died in his throat.

It had been a nightmare. Sammy - Sam - was safe, he wasn't six anymore, and Dean wasn't ten. They were safe, there was no dark figure, Dean could move. He could move. He stood up from the bed and took a few steps around the hotel room to make sure that he could. The dream wasn't real, that wasn't what had happened that day. They had watched cartoons all evening until John had come back, triumphant and earlier than expected, from a regular ghost hunt. They had gone to sleep after eating together, for once, around the rickety hotel table.

What was wrong with his head, for Dean to conjure something as shitty as a dark figure approaching his brother while he could do nothing to protect him?

It took him a few deep breaths and a few checks and re-checks of the handgun under his pillow before he could calm down enough to lay down. Sleep didn't come back to him the whole night. Dean was too afraid to close his eyes, so he kept them on Sam's back.

-:-:-:-:-:-

He dreamt again and again, every night for a week before Sam noticed and made him confess to the nightmares he'd been having. By that time, the circles under his eyes were more pronounced than Dean had ever seen them be and his paranoia was at an all-time high. The dark figure was always there, in every dream he had. Always there, always watching, always just at the periphery of his eyes, of his thoughts. Dean was no longer surprised to see it there in his dreams. At this point, he was surprised that it _wasn't_ in his waking life.

Hell, they didn't have time for this. The demons were out, they had work to do. They were hunters, and their job was a very demanding one. Dean had no time to dwell on nightmares. That also meant he had more and trouble sitting still, nowadays, for fear suddenly of losing the ability to move.

He was never quite sure of whether what he was experiencing was a dream or reality until he woke up, sweaty and panicked, to a silent and safe - _safe_ \- hotel room, Sam by his side, the gun he never let go off for long anymore in his hand. Dean progressively got better at noticing the oddities in his thoughts and behavior during the dreams, but he could do nothing but sit still and watch as Sammy was threatened, he himself was threatened, his mom was threatened, or Bobby was. All by that same _stupid_ dark figure.

They'd called Bobby, who was looking through his stuff to see if anything he had matched Dean's description. The oldest Winchester was quick to make the link between the dark figure he'd seen in that "haunted house" in the town on the outskirts of Chicago and the one he kept seeing in his nightmares. They were uncannily similar, as far as dark figures you could only see out of the corner of your eye for a few seconds went.

Bobby soon confirmed that he had nothing, though. Dean was reluctant to mention what he'd seen during that one hunt, but he had no choice when nothing else was turning up.

That's how he found himself tied to a chair in the middle of Bobby's junkyard, drenched in some kind of disgusting oil and with Sam chanting incomprehensible words in latin at him. Apparently, he was possessed. By what, they were unsure of: there were at least two possibilities, and this was the first of the three rituals they were going to try. Dean found performing exorcisms was much less pleasant when he was on the receiving end of one.

Nothing was happening, though. They were in the middle of the second ritual by the time Dean started feeling anything other than disgust at the ingredients Bobby was shoving at him and boredom at watching Sam's stupidly-serious face as he recited some more words. He started getting cold, which was explainable by the late-night chill in the air. It was only when he'd tried to scratch an itch on his left leg with his right one, and found himself unable to move, that he realized something was wrong. He couldn't move. Again.

Dean would've groaned had he been in possession of his vocal cords at that moment. Was this another nightmare? He couldn't seem to remember ever having been tied and exorcized by his brother before, though maybe his brain had moved on from half-forgotten memories to made-up scenarios to torture him with.

He tried to watch for the dark figure in his periphery, but the minutes passed and Dean still hadn't seen anything. Slowly, panic seized him. Something was wrong. Something was more wrong than usual. The dark figure should have been there by now, taunting him by approaching someone he cared about. Where was it?

Dean was left to panic within the confines of his own mind for a while more. He'd never realized how tight it was around there. His thoughts kept circling and circling and driving him absolutely mad. _The dark figure wasn't approaching, something was wrong, think about something else, what are Sam and Bobby doing, why is nothing happening, why isn't the dark figure approaching, something is wrong, think about something else, dammit,_ what _is going_ on...

Dean opened his mouth. It took him a second to realize - he'd opened his mouth! He could move again. He was about to cry out to Sam that something was wrong when his body moved and his mouth formed a word that wasn't his own.

"Sammy."

Something was very, very wrong.

* * *

 **A/N: Pardon the cliffhanger; I should be back with a new chapter within the next week. If not, T will surely kill me.**


	4. Four

**A/N: Guess who lied about posting this one soon? That's right, my tired little ass. You have no idea how much trouble this chapter gave me. I think I re-wrote it about five times before being remotely satisfied with how it went. I know it stops at an awkward place, but that's as good as I was able to** **manage. Maybe next chapter will go more smoothly.**

 **Also, I have to say that this is the chapter where my story goes more AU. Nothing dramatic yet, but at this point the differences start affecting the time-line.**

 **Enjoy and please review.**

 **DISCLAIMER: I am disclaiming that "Supernatural" and any other work recognizable as belonging to another author is not mine. The shitty dialogue is mine, though.  
**

* * *

 _Dean opened his mouth. It took him a second to realize - he'd opened his mouth! He could move again. He was about to cry out to Sam that something was wrong when his body moved and his mouth formed a word that wasn't his own._

 _"Sammy."_

 _Something was very, very wrong._

"Not now, Dean," Sam muttered before resuming his chant, oblivious to the train wreck happening inside his brother's mind.

"Sam Winchester," Dean's mouth said. The voice coming out of his mouth was his own, familiar one, but the intonation was all wrong. To someone who knew Dean as well as Sam did, it would become immediately apparent that the person speaking with Dean's voice was not Dean. And it did; Sam immediately reacted with pulling a gun out and aiming it at his older brother's head, though he never stopped chanting. Bobby did the same, and Dean found himself unable to move, aimed at by two experienced and extremely good shots. _Today is not my day_ , Dean thought.

"Such a wonderful day today, isn't it?" the thing in control of his body asked, seemingly purposefully mocking Dean's earlier thought. "The sun is shining, the air is light, it's not too hot nor too cold. How are you doing, Sam Winchester and Bobby Singer?"

"What are you and what have you done with Dean?" Bobby asked in his usual gruff voice.

"You know, it's usually polite to ask "who are you," not "what are you." And I don't have to tell you. You're not interesting," the thing said, unperturbed by the two weapons pointed its way – _Dean_ 's way!

Struggling seemed vain to Dean, as he'd already tried to move a muscle, any muscle, several times during the conversation with no success. He simply relaxed as much as one could while possessed by some entity and listened to the conversation, all the while trying to mentally fight the invader and lift its hold from Dean's body.

Sam's chant was still ongoing. At this point, the littlest Winchester was throwing in the necessary ingredients for the completion of the last part of the exorcism. Dean dared hope that it would be enough to let him regain control of his body, if not to banish the thing that possessed him completely.

"I'm asking you again," Bobby demanded, "what have you done with Dean?"

"I haven't done anything with Dean, _Bobby_ Singer," the entity replied mockingly. "He's still here, having fun riding shotgun. Do you know how many fascinating things he thinks about?"

"Leave his body before you get your ass kicked so hard you'll feel it on the other side," Bobby threatened. All he got in response was a mocking laugh and a twisted smile Dean had never made in his life.

"Oh, or you'll do what? Exorcise me?" the entity jeered, shooting an amused glance at Sam's background exorcism.

"Oh, we'll do worse to you," Bobby said.

"Short hair, don't care!" the entity said in a sing-song voice and began half-reciting, half-singing something about Humpty Dumpty. The whole thing, coming out from Dean's mouth and in Dean's voice, had a rather comical – and creepy – effect.

At this moment, Sam finished the incantations with a shout and threw something final into the bowl he had been steadily adding ingredients to. There was a great poof of smoke, and then… nothing. The two men and the entity possessing Dean looked at each other for a few seconds in silence. Dean wasn't sure whether he wanted to laugh or cry at the situation. Except he didn't cry. Of course not. Winchesters didn't cry. Then, the entity started laughing like a mad… person. The laugh was even more disturbing than the last had been. It was breathier than Dean's one and more maniacal than the mocking one the thing had emitted a few moments before.

"That's really sweet," it chortled. "It doesn't work that way, darlings."

"Really?" Sam asked. "'Cause from my perspective, you were forced to show yourself because of this exorcism." He moved closer, shifting his head closer so as to better look into Dean's eyes, as if he was trying to look through Dean's eyes and into the entity's. "We'll have no trouble finding another one that'll take you out."

"Sam, Sam, Sam," the thing chided. "Didn't you hear? You can't do that. I'm just hitching a ride," Dean was made to shrug. "I get in when I want, I get out when I want. Dean's just gonna have to wait before he gets the steering wheel back."

"So you don't intend to harm Dean?" Bobby asked. "You're just hitching a ride, and then what? Moving on to someone else? Excuse me if I don't believe your possessing lying little ass."

 _Hey, I don't have a_ – Dean thought before the entity interrupted him. "Dean doesn't have a small ass. And right now, his ass is my ass and my ass is his ass. No insults here, you insulting stupid little brain."

"Can't you just go before we kill you?" Sam asked, exasperation coloring his voice.

"You can't kill me," it answered. "After all, what are you going to do, shoot Dean?" it asked. As soon as the last word was out of his mouth, Dean regained control of his movements.

"Sam!" Dean immediately called out, "it's gone! I can move again!" he said with more relief than he'd originally intended to let be known. It had been very unsettling to have no control over his own body, to feel it talk and move without his input. If that's what it was like to be possessed by a demon…

Bobby and Sam weren't long in releasing Dean from his bonds after that, thought they kept sneaking worried glances behind his back whenever they thought Dean couldn't see. He understood that he was basically a ticking time-bomb, but there wasn't exactly anything they could do about that, except researching more lore.

The possession didn't seem to be demonic, as Dean had been conscious during the whole experience, and the holy water they'd thrown at Dean seemed to have had no effect on him.

"I hate this," Dean swore.

-:-:-:-:-:-

"I hate this," the entity said. "Do you know how weird your dreams are?" it asked the immobile Dean.

They were once again in his dreams, and Dean was once again unmoving, looking at the entity from the corner of his eyes. Even though it had started interacting with him directly during his dreams, he still couldn't see it in more detail than a dark silhouette from somewhere at the fringe of his vision.

"Too much porn and not enough gore for my taste," it continued. Dean refused to acknowledge the entity just as much as he had when it had first started monologuing at him. Not that he'd be able to speak even if he wanted to. The intention was what counted, he tried to convince himself.

"Do you ever notice how much empty space there is in your head?" the entity asked. "You focus on so little that there's so much space left."

Dean stubbornly kept his attention on the road in front of him. The dream was of him and Sam driving in the Impala, on the way to another hunt. He didn't even know why he was dreaming about that. He wasn't even sure when it had happened. The entity was in the backseat, behind and slightly to the right of Dean.

"And your brother, Sam Winchester. There's a lot of him in there. Funny how he seems not to be doing much in your dreams. Always just sitting quietly. Reading, watching, sleeping."

Dean did his outmost to focus on the road. He wasn't actually responsible for driving in this memory-turned-nightmare, and so he took the time to look at the sky, the trees speeding by the Impala, the interminable lines lining the road.

"And your father, John Winchester. There's a bit of him in here too, but it's mostly hunting lessons and punishments. Interesting."

There, a bird flew off of a branch and disappeared behind as the car drove past it. Dean was counting the number of bumps in the road. _7, 8, 9_ …

"And your mother, Mary Winchester. She died? That's sad. You dream about her quite a lot, too. Missing your mommy?"

Dean started singing the first song that came to mind – fittingly, Highway to Hell – as loud as he could in his mind, as if it would keep out the sound of the entity's rant.

"And you dream about Hell a lot? Do you even know what it's like? How can you dream about something in so much detail when you don't even know what it's like?

Okay, it was really _really_ getting on his nerves now. He entertained himself with the idea of socking it in the nose – if it even had one – as hard as he could. Even that couldn't keep the anger and annoyance from rising and rising and rising.

"And- "

"Shut up!" Dean shouted as he woke up. He was completely disoriented for a few seconds until he saw that he was in one of Bobby's guest rooms. He'd woken himself up in annoyance.

The entity just wouldn't shut _up_. It's been days. Every time Dean would start dreaming, it would be there, at the edge of his vision, talking and talking and asking questions it knew Dean was unable to answer. It was driving him mad.

The most worrisome parts were those where the dreams seemed to shift, more and more often. They would start normally, but by the end Dean would find himself in what he imagined Hell would be like. The entity was always there, stalking him and his memories, commenting on every little thing, mocking his fears.

His inability to do anything about it was driving him absolutely insane. Even more worrying was the fact that he started getting more and more lost in his thoughts. Dean had never been the dreamt type of guy. Nowadays, he'd snap back to reality only to realize he'd been conjuring up insults to hurl back at the possessing _sonofabitch_ instead of focusing on the road in front of him. Luckily, there's hadn't been any incident with that yet. The fact that he could crash his baby without even noticing was a scary thought.

Bobby and Sam were frantically researching anything they could in hopes of finding trace of a demon that could jump into a body without automatically taking the front seat. Dean was being kept out of it, in hopes that the entity wouldn't be able to stop their efforts to exorcize it. It was a smart idea on their part. That didn't mean Dean had to like the inaction.

He was more of the barge-in-with-guns-blazing kind of guy. Not the sit-around-and-wait-while-others-fix-the-problem type of guy. So Dean didn't; he ran errands around town for Bobby. He took care of baby. He went on a few simple hunts close-by. He cleaned and re-cleaned all of the weapons from the Impala's trunk. Hell, he even read a book or two that he pilfered from Bobby's shelves.

All through that, the nightmares and the entity plagued his night hours, never letting him rest properly. Dean had to agree with Sam that he looked like shit when he saw the black circles under his eyes. He was more twitchy than normal, more paranoid. A few times, he'd pointed his gun at what he thought was the entity before realizing that it was just Sam or Bobby coming into the room. He'd stopped going out so much after that.

-:-:-:-:-:-

One morning, almost two months after he got saddled with the entity, Dean came down to the kitchen for some breakfast. They'd bought takeout yesterday evening, and he could practically smell the leftovers from his assigned bedroom on the second floor.

He was rubbing his eyes and making a bee-line straight for the fridge when his legs gave out under him and he fell on his knees, hard, on the linoleum floor of the kitchen. Only then did he notice that the table that usually stood in the middle of the room was gone. He barely had the time to catch himself before he hit his nose on the floor. Behind him, he heard Sam's voice, reciting something. He turned around just in time to receive a face-full of holy water.

 _Guess they found how to exorcize me_ , Dean thought.

 _Not today_ , something replied in his thoughts. Dean promptly lost control of his limbs again. The entity was back in the driver's seat, and it was pissed.


End file.
